Occasional Papers
Karl Popper’s Politics: Liberalism versus Democratic Socialism
Karl Popper (1902-94) was one of the twentieth century’s leading philosophers. Popper’s theory of knowledge consists of fallible conjectures rather than true belief- was a seminal contribution to the field. His book The Open Society and its Enemies contains a powerful critique of authoritarian political ideas. While democratic socialists have drawn inspiration from Popper, in this Occasional Paper Jeremy Shearmur shows how Popper’s though lends support to the ideas and institutions of classical liberalism.
